Flight Official Ch.14

CHAPTER 14 - THE FAKE TRANSCRIPT
Summary
The 9/11 Commission asserted that the NMCC never engaged with either the FAA hijack net or White House teleconference, but rather initiated its own separate teleconference at 9:29 – 26 minutes after knowing the nation was under attack (Com-pg. 36-37). The 9/11 Commission further asserted that the NMCC’s teleconference failed to bring in anyone with useful knowledge from the FAA during the attacks (Com-pg. 36-37). The transcript from this teleconference was cited as the key piece of evidence to support the 9/11 Commission’s narrative that the NMCC did not track or prepare to shoot down Flight 93 while it was still airborne and that Winfield, Myers, Rumsfeld, and Cheney never engaged with the military’s response to the 9/11 attacks before Flight 93 crashed (Pentagon, Com-pg. 36-37, 463 FN 194-196, 198, 200). However, this transcript was completely re-written by the offices of the Defense Secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make it “more accurate” than the original real-time recordings/transcript (Pentagon), which was never released to the public despite containing very little sensitive information that could easily have been redacted (NYT).

Sources:
Department of Defense, 9/11/2001, “Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference”
New York Times, 9/7/2011, “Newly Published Audio Provides Real-Time View of 9/11 Attacks”
Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, 10/20/2003, “Subject: 9-11 Air Threat Conference Call Transcription”
9/11 Commission, July 2004, “9/11 Commission Report,” pgs. 36-37, 463 (footnotes 194-196, 198, 200)

Pentagon Belatedly Starts Its Own Teleconference, FAA Not Included Until Attack is Over; Pentagon Completely Rewrites Transcript to Make It “More Accurate”
This chapter will address one of the main pieces of evidence that purports to support the 9/11 Commission’s narrative that Brigadier General Winfield, General Richard Myers, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and Vice President Cheney (as we will see next chapter) did not enter or engage with the NMCC until around 10 AM or later and were not involved in timely efforts to shoot down Flight 93 before it crashed. This piece of evidence is the NMCC’s “significant event” teleconference transcript.

As we have already seen, the 9/11 Commission Report claimed NMCC personnel were too busy with “other important tasks”, in the words of Major Charles Chambers, to join the FAA hijack net until 9:20 and they were too busy to pay any attention to it when they finally did join. They were also apparently too busy to join the White House teleconference, which logs said began at 9:25, but which Richard Clarke indicated he started closer to the second WTC impact at 9:03. So what were NMCC personnel so busy doing? The question remains unanswered to this day. The 9/11 Commission report stated:

“Inside the National Military Command Center, the deputy director for operations immediately thought the second strike [at 9:03] was a terrorist attack… [so he] called for an all-purpose ‘significant event’ conference. It began at 9:29…”

Why did the NMCC take 26 minutes in the midst of a massive terrorist attack to take any action whatsoever, albeit a misguided action of initiating its own teleconference instead of participating in the existing ones?

Once the NMCC teleconference began, it was purportedly joined by NORAD and about ten minutes later the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) at the White House. However, the NMCC did not bring in the FAA until well after the attacks were over, and whoever they did finally bring in had no decision-making power or familiarity with hijacks. The 9/11 Commission report explained:

“Operators worked feverishly to include the FAA, but they had equipment problems and difficulty finding secure phone numbers… The FAA representative who finally joined the call at 10:17 had no familiarity with or responsibility of hijackings, no access to decision makers, and none of the information available to senior FAA officials.”

According to the publicly available transcript of this call (called “9-11 Air Threat Conference Call Transcription”, cited in Ch. 1 footnotes 194-196, 198, 200 on page 463), NORAD and the PEOC repeatedly asked the NMCC if the FAA was on the call, and the response always came back negative. Perhaps they should have just turned up the speakerphone volume on the FAA’s hijack net call so everyone could have heard their updates. At one point when the PEOC asked yet again if the FAA was on the call, the NMCC deputy director of operations replied:

“No, we've been unable to get them. We have them on a separate line in NMCC.”

Commissioner Bob Kerry heatedly and ridiculously attacked Monte Belger during his June 2004 testimony for allowing an FAA representative with no familiarity with hijackings to finally join the NMCC teleconference. Belger replied that he had clue who the NMCC tried to contact and they should have been listening to the hijack net from the beginning. Here is part of that exchange:

Kerry: “…the teleconference that NMCC initiated. How in God's name could you put somebody on the telephone who joined the call with no familiarity or responsibility for hijack situations, had no access to decision-makers, and had none of the information available to senior FAA officials at that time?”

“What the hell is going on that you would do such a thing? …who did that? Who put somebody on the phone that was not able to participate, was not able to tell, at a very late time, I must say, the military what was going on?”

Belger: “I don't know, as I said, who the NMCC tried to call.”

Kerry: “Why did you put somebody on the phone that knew nothing?”

Belger: “I didn't put anybody on that phone.”

Kerry: “Well, who did?”

Belger: “I don't know. That's what I said, sir. I will tell you, though… at 9:20, the NMCC was called. They were added to this open communication net. In my 30 years of history, there was always somebody listening to that net. Real-time information. That was the purpose of it.”

Aside from all this, the October 2003 memorandum cover page for the public transcript of the NMMC conference call contained the following unbelievable statement:

“The entire transcription was redone by USD(I) [Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence] staff in conjunction with Joint Staff because there were many inaccuracies in the original.”

The original NMCC transcript was transcribed from audiotapes that recorded everything as it happened in real-time! How can it possibly be the case the entirely rewritten version generated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Secretary’s staff was more accurate? This bizarre claim defies credulity.

Ten years after 9/11, the New York Times reported that both the audio recording and the original transcript of the NMCC teleconference were still classified despite containing only small portions of sensitive material that could easily have been redacted. The article stated:

“The other still-secret recording [beside the Flight 93 cockpit recording] is of a high-level conference call that began at 9:28 and grew, over the course of the morning, to include senior figures like Mr. Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers… The 9/11 Commission was not permitted to keep a copy of it or of the transcript… and investigators were closely monitored when they listened to it… [9/11 Commission staff investigator, former Army Colonel Miles] Kara said he believed that the only truly sensitive material on the recordings were small portions that concerned the provisions being made to continue government operations if the attacks took out some national leadership or facilities.”